Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Bacteria-powered motor!

Crawling bacteria provide the power to turn this micromotor. Scientists at the University of Tokyo and the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan built the device with processes similar to those used to fabricate integrated circuits. The "bacterial-propulsion units," a strain of Mycoplasma mobile, crawl clockwise in a groove underneath the motor's rotor, tugging the motor in a circle. It circles at twice the speed of a watch's second hand and doesn't generate much torque, but the researchers report that adding more bacteria would greatly improve the results. (from BoingBoing)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home